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Group recommends in-hospital interventions to help curb violence

CHAIRMAN of the Violence Prevention Alliance (VPA) Dr Elizabeth Ward is proposing in-hospital interventions as one of several strategies to prevent violence.

Dr Ward made the suggestions while giving data on violence-related injuries (VRIs) recorded at the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) for 2016 and 2017 at a peace building action workshop held in Kingston, recently.

“We should implement in-hospital interventions by stationing at least two social workers and a violence interrupter at the hospitals to prevent retaliation,” she recommended.

In addition, she suggested therapeutic interventions for children with violent injuries.

Ward, at the same time, revealed that fighting and arguments accounted for a number of violence-related injuries reported at the KPH for 2016 and 2017. The data showed that 70 per cent of males who reported at the KPH for violent related injuries, were a result of fights and arguments in 2016. The figure climbed to 77 per cent in 2017.

The VPA chairman disclosed that 50 per cent of these fights and arguments involving males occurred in the streets in 2017.

For females, 48 per cent of these fights/arguments took place at home.

She said when the females were the victims, 49 per cent of perpetrators were acquaintances while 31 per cent of the perpetrators were intimate partners.

The data for Kingston showed a similar trend to the findings for Clarendon, which were presented at peace building action workshop held in Clarendon last month. Fights and arguments accounted for the majority of the number of violence-related injuries reported at the May Pen Hospital in Clarendon in 2016 and 2017, according to data made available by the hospital.

The series of workshops, which are being funded by CSJP III, Ministry of National Security and the Department for International Development Caribbean 2017 also saw presentations on data for the parish of Kingston and for two communities, Highlight View and Land Lease.

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